Facebook has bought a startup which builds neural monitoring armband

Facebook has made another acquisition of a growing startup based out of NYC. This startup is named the CTRL-labs and it focuses on building neural monitoring armbands. Basically, CTRL-labs’ armbands use the neural pulses from the person wearing it and translate movement into digital input signals which are then used further.

CTRL-labs investors include GV, Lux Capital, Amazon’s Alexa Fund, Spark Capital and Founders Fund, among others and it has already raised $67 million. While Facebook did not disclose how much it paid CTRL-labs to acquire them, sources close to the matter reveals that deal between $500 million and $1 billion was made.

Once the deal gets closed, this startup will come to Facebook’s Reality Labs division which is Facebook’s division for AR/VR efforts. With this acquisition, we expect Facebook to announce a new product in the neural network category as well. CTRL CEO and Co-founder will be joining Facebook after the acquisition while its employees will have the option to do the same according to a report.

Facebook, announcing its acquisition, says that “We know there are more natural, intuitive ways to interact with devices and technology. And we want to build them,” “It’s why we’ve agreed to acquire CTRL-labs. They will be joining our Facebook Reality Labs team where we hope to build this kind of technology, at scale, and get it into consumer products faster.”

While Facebook has previously said that they want to build a non-invasive brain input device that can make things like text entry possible just by thinking. While CTRL-labs focuses less on text input, it is more towards muscle movement, and hand movements specifically. So it will be interesting to see how Facebook manages to build a text-input device with CTRL-labs’ IP.

In an interview, CTRL-labs’ CEO told TechCrunch that “There are some fundamental advantages that we have over really any camera-based technology — including Leap Motion or Kinect — because we’re directly on the body sensing the signal that’s going from the brain to the hand.” “There are no issues with collusion or field-of-view problems — it doesn’t matter where your hands are, whether they’re in a glove or a spacesuit.”